Survey, 2012-06-07, Hungary

Lake Balaton, turbid-water mapping campaign

A single-day mapping campaign across one of Europe's largest shallow lakes in June 2012, reading chlorophyll-a, suspended matter, and CDOM together through optically complex inland water

Published figures

Interpolated fields from the campaign, reproduced as issued. Plate titles carry the LIFL-9 under its original designation, UFL-9.

Whole-lake composite

Interpolated chlorophyll a field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, Whole-lake composite
Fig. 1Chlorophyll a
Interpolated CDOM field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, Whole-lake composite
Fig. 2CDOM
Interpolated total suspended sediment field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, Whole-lake composite
Fig. 3Total suspended sediments

7 June 2012

Interpolated chlorophyll a field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, 7 June 2012
Fig. 4Chlorophyll a
Interpolated CDOM field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, 7 June 2012
Fig. 5CDOM
Interpolated total suspended matter field mapped along the lidar track, Lake Balaton, 7 June 2012
Fig. 6TSM
Lake BalatonCentral Europe
5 km
● Lake Balaton 2012, 2012-06-0728,931 measurements IDW interpolation, 600 samples
Chl-a3.9647.6µg/L
CDOM1.215.37a.u.
TSS0.8530.3mg/L

Fig. 7 Campaign scan. 28,931 lidar returns along the ship track, switchable across Chl-a, CDOM, TSS. Field view interpolates the channel across the surveyed water from the same measurements (inverse-distance weighting). Shoreline: Natural Earth.

Lake Balaton is one of the largest shallow lakes in Europe and among the most optically awkward, turbid, productive, and variable in both space and time, which made it an early proving ground for ship-mounted ultraviolet fluorescence lidar. On 7 June 2012 a LIF lidar mapped the lake in a single day, reading chlorophyll a, total suspended matter, and CDOM along the track at the same place and moment.

The water is productive rather than extreme, with median chlorophyll a near 6.6 µg/L against suspended matter near 9.1 mg/L, and both climb steeply in the shallower western basin. Balaton is also where ship-mounted fluorescence lidar was first assessed against conventional samples in fresh water, work published with the Balaton Limnological Research Institute in Remote Sensing in 2013, and it remains the reference case for the method away from the open ocean.